Lebanese ally of Syria's Assad to be indicted

BEIRUT - A former Lebanese government minister with close ties to Syrian President Bashar Assad will be indicted for involvement in "terror plots," security sources said on Saturday.

The sources said Judge Sami Sader, the Lebanese deputy commissioner of the Military Tribunal, will indict Michel Samaha for charges including transporting explosives from Syria for use in north Lebanon.

Samaha's supporters said his detention was political after police arrested him at his house in the town of Metn northeast of Beirut in the early hours of Thursday.

Investigators had confiscated "three or four telephones, a laptop and two or three films," Malek al-Sayyed, a lawyer for Samaha, told al-Manar TV.